Subject
Re: fleurs du plaisir
From
Date
Body
Alexey Sklyarenko: re Blok and burning peat bogs: "It can be proved, I think, by published records that Alexander Blok was even then noting in his diary the very peat smoke I saw, and the wrecked sky." (Speak, Memory, Chapter Twelve, 2)
JM: Do you think that Nabokov, in ADA, could have been criticizing the ecological dangers of using peat to obtain energy, when he describes Lettrocalamity and the Burning Barn episode? There are the names related to it, the lineage of Veen that stops with Van, Ada and Lucette, Torfyanka, the flavita word Torfyanuyu (peaty), the ghostly Cinderella-Blanche de Torf variations (La Torbiere).
I suppose that, although the dangers of flammable peat bogs and their drainage represent a real threat, independently of their importance for the economy, all the peats and torfs must have another meaning, as a metaphor of something passing through Cinderella (ie,ashes) and that's connected to the work of Alexander Blok?? (I read Brian Boyd's important "Ada, the Bog and the Garden: or, Straw, Fluff, and Peat:" too long ago to recollect this link and I don't have it at hand right now).
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
JM: Do you think that Nabokov, in ADA, could have been criticizing the ecological dangers of using peat to obtain energy, when he describes Lettrocalamity and the Burning Barn episode? There are the names related to it, the lineage of Veen that stops with Van, Ada and Lucette, Torfyanka, the flavita word Torfyanuyu (peaty), the ghostly Cinderella-Blanche de Torf variations (La Torbiere).
I suppose that, although the dangers of flammable peat bogs and their drainage represent a real threat, independently of their importance for the economy, all the peats and torfs must have another meaning, as a metaphor of something passing through Cinderella (ie,ashes) and that's connected to the work of Alexander Blok?? (I read Brian Boyd's important "Ada, the Bog and the Garden: or, Straw, Fluff, and Peat:" too long ago to recollect this link and I don't have it at hand right now).
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/